Located in the city of Konya, Türkiye, Kalyon Enerji’s Karapinar GES, which the company unveiled in 2020, became the biggest solar power plant in Europe. The plant consists of 3.2 million solar panels and is able to generate clean power for 2 million people on a regular basis. Every year, the solar power plant saves nearly 450 million dollars which otherwise would be spent on fossil fuel resources. In addition, the plant has stopped 3 million tonnes of carbon emissions. The plant is a huge step towards making clean energy more popular and more efficient both in Türkiye and Europe in general.
The power plant covers an area of 20 million square meters. To put it in another way, Karapinar GES has the size of 2,600 soccer fields or a quarter of Paris. Furthermore, the plant has the capacity to generate 1.350 MW. This number raises the percentage of solar power by 20% in the total sum of renewable energy resources usage.
Karapinar GES is a part of the Renewable Energy Resource Zone initiative of Türkiye. This initiative encourages the construction of clean energy plants in the most appropriate locations. For example, Karapinar is the only place in the country that has a desert-like climate. Therefore, the power plant here makes use of the solar power the region gets on a daily basis.
Aside from the panels, Karapinar GES is also famous for its control building, or a Scada building. A Scada building gathers information and data as well as monitoring and operating the technical equipment on the field. The construction of the Scada building in the solar power plant started after a competition decided on who would build it. The structure is 2 meters above the ground and is accessible by a rising ramp. There are strong cores on the corners of the building and it has a mirror-like exterior to break the sunlight.
